Hard Rain

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"Morning," Sergeant De Gier said cheerfully. He was a tall, wide-shouldered man, sprawled behind a dented metal desk in the far corner of a gray room. "Had a good holiday?"

The heavyset adjutant, looking even more portly in his three-piece dark blue suit, bought a size too large to accommodate his not-too-well-distributed bulk, lumbered on.

"Hello?" de Gier asked. "Remember me? Your assistant of the last ten years or more?"

"Bah," Adjutant Grijpstra said. He turned, walked back to the door, and pushed the latch shut. He walked over to de Gier's desk and turned on his heel.

"No," de Gier said. "Please. The last time that door was replaced, I had to pay half the cost. No, Adjutant."

"Ha!" Adjutant Grijpstra shouted. His hand slid under his jacket and was back at once. A silver line linked his hand and the door. A stiletto trembled in the door's plywood.

"One day you'll be sorry," de Gier said. "Your knife's point penetrates the wood by three inches. Someone might get seriously hurt."

Someone was rattling the door's handle.

"Just a minute," Grijpstra shouted. He walked back to the door and pulled back the latch.

A young man, dressed in a rumpled corduroy suit, his small face topped by unruly wavy hair, stumbled into the room, holding his chest with both hands. He moaned and doubled up before his legs gave way.

"See?" de Gier said. "In Cardozo's case there's no big loss-he can easily be replaced-but you might hit Jane, the loveliest member of our force, or Miss Antoinette, the commissaris's new secretary. I haven't had time to convince her yet."

"Stop spoiling my practice," Grijpstra said, dropping his weight heavily into a swivel chair. "Besides, I usually aim high."

"Convince Miss Antoinette of what?" Cardozo asked, picking himself up.

"Of my harmlessness," Sergeant de Gier said, smiling. "She thinks I want a permanent relationship, but I'll never interfere with her freedom, of course. All I'm hoping for is just a few hours of shared warmth."

"After she pays for the meal," Grijpstra rumbled. "No."

"No what?" de Gier asked. "If I pay for the meal I have a hold on her. She'll feel she owes me. I don't mind owing her. I'm prepared to be as humble as she likes a man to be."

"No, I didn't have a good holiday," Grijpstra said. "Campgrounds are too noisy, and we were washed out in the end. Nellie lost her tent. First it was pressed down by all the water and then it blew away. Best thing that happened. I went home and rested for a week."

"Did you take Nellie to your house?" Cardozo asked.

"Of course not," Grijpstra said.

"Really," de Gier said, stretching. As his arms reached up, the butt of his oversize pistol was visible under his stylish jacket. "You mean Nellie still doesn't know your wife is gone? Why are you keeping up that farce?"

"Suppose my wife comes back?" Grijpstra asked. "Two women in my small, comfortable, empty, whitewashed home?"

"I thought your divorce went through," Cardozo said from behind the wobbly little table that served him as a desk.

"She might just come back," Grijpstra said. "You never know. And if I took Nellie home for a week, she might just stay. Nellie has her own hotel. My wife lives in a huge villa with her sister in the country. I don't move in with them, do I?" He frowned furiously. "And what is it to you?"

"Why do you feel threatened, Adjutant?" De Gier asked. "Your wife left you because she doesn't like you. Nellie loves her freedom above all. All women do, these days. Why couldn't you extend a normal courtesy to a fellow human being, regardless of sex? A lonely woman who just lost her tent and who has only one week of her hard-earned holiday left before she has to return to the daily grind of running an overcrowded hotel singlehanded?"

Grijpstra rummaged in the drawer of his desk. He found a cigar, bit off the tip, and spat it into the waste-paper basket. "So what else is new? You two been busy? Any business? Can we get out of my private life?"

Cardozo watched the adjutant's slender knife. "You're getting better, Adjutant-you're hitting the door now."

"I hit what I intend to hit," Grijpstra said.

"How come you never tell us beforehand what you're aiming at?" Cardozo asked.

"Ah," Grijpstra said. "Answer that yourself." He turned his chair around. "Sergeant, report."

"Dead banker," de Gier said. "Suicide. I saw a report signed by Halba and Adjutant Guldemeester. Being up north, I wasn't in on that. Three dead junkies, overdosed on pure heroin in a houseboat at the Binnenkant. Guldemeester checked that out, too. A German terrorist got shot. Big trouble at Headquarters here, but that's internal politics, of course. You don't care for politics, do you now?"

"No," Grijpstra said. "Anyone have the file with the daily reports?"

De Gier got up and presented the adjutant with a sheaf of dog-eared pink paper held by a transparent plastic cover. "It's all in here."

Grijpstra leafed through the file. "The dead banker lived at the Binnenkant? The junkies' boat was berthed in the Binnenkant canal?"

"Yes, I saw that." De Gier crossed his long legs on his desk. "Same location. The houseboat happens to be just opposite the banker's home. I asked Adjutant Guldemeester, but he claims the two incidents are unrelated."

"What's with politics?" Cardozo asked. "I care. Any interesting gossip?"

De Gier leaned back as far as his creaky chair allowed. "A carton of weaponry was lifted from the ballistics room. Our two pathologists are at war with each other. It seems that half the charwomen keeping this place clean are illegal aliens. Coins have been filched from the coffee machines. Several attractive female prisoners have a way of being taken out of their cells at night by unspecified personnel."

Grijpstra looked up from the file. "That isn't gossip, that's fact."

"The gossip is that changes for the better are now due, Adjutant." De Gier's large brown eyes twinkled. "Some colleagues are saying so. There's leakage to the press. Journalists are writing up our mess. There was a lengthy editorial in Saturday's paper that wondered why so few crimes are solved and why highly placed officers keep being issued with new expensive cars. It also mentioned the new chief constable and his apparent failure to deal with ineptitude and gross corruption."

"The chief constable just sits around," Cardozo said. "Chief Inspector Halba sneaks around. Adjutant Guldemeester helps him sneak."

"Four corpses." Grijpstra closed the file and shook it. "So that houseboat where the junkies died is opposite the house where the banker lived? Did you see the other complaint referring to the Binnenkant?"

"The helpless old lady?" de Gier asked. "Saying some musicians are drumming her out of her home? I've seen that complaint before. Doesn't she live at number 20?"

Grijpstra pushed himself free of his chair and walked over to the opposite wall. His stubby finger prodded at the city's map. "Number 20 should be just behind the houseboat where the junkies died. Old ladies don't sleep well, they like sitting at their windows late at night. The night the banker died was the night the big thunderstorm broke. Maybe the old lady watched the spectacle from her apartment. The report says she lives upstairs and the musicians make their racket in the lower part of the house. If she lives upstairs, she can look over the houseboat and see the banker's house across the water. Maybe she noticed something unusual. She could even have heard the shot. The corpse was found near a front window."

"Near an open front window," de Gier said. "The hapless banker could have been watching the bad weather, too. All that thunder reminded him of gunfire. He looked for his gun."

"For his Walther PPK pistol, according to the report," Cardozo said. "Expensive. An appropriate weapon for an influential man to have around."

"An illegal weapon," Grijpstra said. He walked back to his desk. He picked up the file and pointed it accusingly at de Gier. "And the junkies just happened to die on their boat across the street? The very same night?"

"You know, Adjutant," de Gier said gently, "this is not our case. Besides, it's closed."

Grijpstra dropped the file and pounded it softly with both fists. "The report is too brief. Is the commissaris back yet?"

"You wouldn't suggest," de Gier said, "that a case closed by colleagues should be reopened, would you now?"

Cardozo brought out his notebook. "It's the junkies that get me. Do you know that I had a junkie visit me here? An American who said he lived in a houseboat on the Binnenkant? His name was Jimmy. One of the dead is called James T. Floyd in the report. Isn't 'Jimmy' short for 'James'?"

"Ask de Gier," Grijpstra said. "Our intellectual sergeant knows all about everything. He even reads French literature."

"Sergeant?" Cardozo asked.

De Gier nodded.

Cardozo checked his notes. "Jimmy called here a month ago. Pity the file doesn't give physical descriptions." He reached for his telephone and dialed. "Mr. Jacobs? How're you doing? You're not? I'm sorry. Is that right? You don't want to be doing? That's okay, then. Listen, a question, Mr. Jacobs. You have a dead young man there, an American, James T. Floyd of Berkeley, California, it should say so on the tag on his toe. I want to know what he looks like. Sure, I'll wait." Cardozo held his hand over the phone's mouthpiece. "Yagh! I can hear Jacobs pull the metal box out of the fridge." He dropped his hand off the receiver. "Tall? Long blond hair? Missing front teeth? Thank you, Mr. Jacobs, that's what I wanted to hear." Cardozo replaced the phone.

"You're acquainted with the deceased," Grijpstra said. "That's nice."

Cardozo grimaced sadly. "Yes, Jimmy came to tell me about some planned murder. That's what I like about specialization. We're the Murder Brigade, so if a visitor says 'murder,' he's sent to us. Pity I didn't believe him at the time."

Grijpstra pounded his desk with more force. "Dead junkies on a boat. Dead banker in a house across from the boat. Dead junkie, when still alive, comes here to gab about murder. Adjutant Guldemeester says there's no connection. Chief Inspector Halba diagnoses one case as suicide and the other as an overdose. Bah!"

"Constable?" de Gier said. "Why didn't we get to hear about Jimmy?"

"I forgot," Cardozo said. "We were working on the Frisian case. Lots of odd birds drop in here from time to time. Odd crazy birds. We chase them away. You're lucky I made a note. He was in here two minutes before he fell off his chair. Wanted heroin in exchange for information."

"But subject mentioned murder. Did he mention anything else?"

Cardozo shrugged. "A murder that was planned. He would tell me all about it in exchange for junk. The informer was ill. A scarecrow, a sight. If this Jimmy turns out to be the dead James T. Floyd, I won't be surprised."

"What happened after the subject fell off his chair?" Grijpstra asked.

"I picked him up," Cardozo said, "walked him down the stairs, and pushed him into the street. Standard instructions. Sick junkies aren't taken to hospitals anymore, since treatment is usually refused by the medical staff. Waste of time and trouble."

"He must have said something more," de Gier said. "A lot of words fit into two minutes."

Cardozo read from his notes. "Subject claims to study Chinese literature at the University of California in Berkeley. He had taken a year off to visit magical Amsterdam."

De Gier gestured enthusiastically. "We could check, you know. There are enough details. I could send a teletype message to all stations. Most junkies are known to some cop or other. Jimmy probably dealt junk, too. The Alien Department might know of him as well. You think he really was a student, Cardozo?"

"Maybe," Cardozo said. "Subject must be intelligent, for he spoke passably good Dutch, learned within a year. He could have been well off once, a refined-looking wreck."

"Missing teeth," de Gier said. "A fight?"

"Junk does that to them." Cardozo shifted his papers around absentmindedly. "Pity I didn't follow up."

"You could have reported subject to Narcotics," de Gier said.

"Waste of time, Sergeant. Narcotics used to be Chief Inspector Halba's show. At Narcotics, nobody has time to listen."

"Halba had already been transferred to the Murder Brigade by then."

"And he hadn't been replaced," Cardozo said. "That department wasn't functioning. It functions a little bit now. Chief Inspector Rood is supposed to be in charge again."

Grijpstra sighed. "Nothing much has changed. Isn't it great to be back at work? Sergeant, it's your turn to buy me coffee at the cafe of my choice. The commissaris isn't back yet, I take it. You didn't answer my question just now."

De Gier dialed. "Miss Antoinette? It's me. Has the chief shown up yet, or is he still in his Austrian sulfur bath? Miss Antoinette? Remember my suggestion? I'm sorry if I made my intentions too clear, perhaps, but if I don't we'll never get anywhere together. Since you're so shy, I mean, and since I'm shy, too. This afternoon? Thank you very much."

"During working hours?" Cardozo asked. "Are you out of your mind? That's all we need. You'll be suspended for sure. There's a whole list of complaints against you as it is."

"The commissaris is due back this afternoon," de Gier said. "I know about the complaints. Halba was waving the list at me. Dangerous driving and Lord knows what. Balderdash, mostly. Adjutant? Did you read what the file says about the German terrorist? There's more trouble there."

"Colleagues killed the fellow, didn't they?" Cardozo asked. "In a telephone booth. I saw it in the paper on the way back from Spain. Chief Inspector Halba was in charge of the hunt."

"He wasn't really," de Gier said. "Chief Inspector Rood prepared the case, traced the suspect, did everything. Halba stepped in at the last moment. There's news value in such an arrest. Halba is a fool. He placed detectives around the booth. When suspect started shooting, colleagues had to return his fire, and since there were cops on all sides, someone was bound to get hurt."

Grijpstra groaned.

"See what happens if we aren't around?" Cardozo asked. "By the way, I heard some talk in the canteen just now. Informers tell us that both Halba and Guldemeester seem to be having a good time at local night spots."

"I know," de Gier said. "Small town. Bad news travels fast."

"You heard about the chief constable as well?"

"Out on the tiles too?" de Gier asked.

"Extramarital trouble. A blonde photo model he shows off in his Porsche."

"Forget the coffee," Grijpstra said, and stomped over to the door. He yanked his knife out of the wood. "I'm going out alone."

Cardozo looked up when the door banged behind Grijpstra. "What's with him?"

"Holidays never agree with the adjutant," de Gier said. "He probably feels he's been missing out. He turns his back a moment, and four corpses are strewn about in the same location." De Gier picked up a pair of drumsticks from Grijpstra's desk and stroked a cymbal that formed part of a set of battered percussion instruments wedged between a filing cabinet and the window. "What do you think, colleague? Something smelly about the banker's death, maybe?"

Cardozo pouted. "I never trust you when you call me 'colleague.' "

De Gier tried a roll on the big drum. "Answer the question."

"Maybe," Cardozo said. "Suicide is pretty easy to prove."

"Easy to disprove, too." De Gier scratched the snare drum with both sticks. "Pity Grijpstra hasn't been playing lately. Too much on his mind. All our troubles are getting him down. Silly, really. Troubles are exciting."

"You haven't been playing either," Cardozo said. "You two let me down. I only joined the department to listen to your compositions. Variations on a Bach theme adapted for snare drum and piccolo. That used to make me happy."

De Gier hit the side of the drum, alternating sharp raps with more scratching of cymbals. He whistled some high notes. "Was that the theme?"

"Yeh," Cardozo said, "it gets sad later. First you build up a good strong rhythm and then suddenly there are all these moody notes."

"Better wait for Grijpstra to come back, then." De Gier dropped the sticks. "I'm much too cheerful on my own. Come along, colleague." He opened the door. "After you."

"Where to?"

"There's a shortage of officers this morning," de Gier said. "Lead me to a cafe of my choice. It's your turn to pay. I won't do any work until the commissaris returns this afternoon and hands out orders."